I'm currently writing something to be published on leanpub. How do you take care of marketing/promotion? Do you just leave it to sell or do something more proactive?
To market, I make comments on HackerNews mentioning it as an aside ;) Seriously, marketing is the hardest part for me. I feel like I have something worthwhile that has helped 1500+ people learn Trello, but marketing and self-promotion is not something that comes natural to me. I will say, my first sale happened by accident via the platform. I accidentally hit publish, and was surprised when I got my first sale before I even knew I was selling anything ;)
Since then, I've put on Google Analytics so I can see my traffic sources. The top referral sources are:
- Direct and Organic Search. I wish I could figure out how to understand those a bit more...
- A card on the official Trello Resources Board. I got up the nerve to "just ask" and they put me there.
- Some comments/articles on Lifehacker. I commented and link to the site, and they've referenced a few of my template boards (which link to the site).
- Reddit/HackerNews. I don't want to be spammy, but if it's relevant I will link to the site like what I did here.
- My own blog and trellodojo.info. I've had a longtime personal nerd-blog and am trying out trellodojo.info as a dedicated "niche site". I plan to do some other products out of there.
So, yes, their promotion does help, but I do see spikes when I actively market.
